


with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair

by msbrokenbrightside



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Flowers, Gen, Happy Ending, Mentions of Vesh, Multi, Reflection, life and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 17:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10392081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msbrokenbrightside/pseuds/msbrokenbrightside
Summary: His mother wakes him early in the morning, the dew still clinging to the grass as it shy's away from the rising sun’s light. He's tripping along the path as she leads him into the forest, rubbing at his eyes. You’d think on his wedding day they would allow him to sleep in but it turns out even a God’s betrothed didn’t earn extra hours.She guides him higher up the mountain, one of the many surrounding their tiny village, before she stops in front of the flowers.It’s surprising how well they've been thriving without upkeep.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Whenever I find a song perfect for a character (or ship) after I’ve made and published their playlist I try to write a fic for it. So here’s one for Kashaw and Mumford & Sons' “After the Storm”. Completly self-betad at midnightish so all mistakes are mine, hopefully not too many.
> 
> (["After the Storm" by Mumford & Sons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKRuqWIPmRo))

His mother wakes him early in the morning, the dew still clinging to the grass as it shy's away from the rising sun’s light. He's tripping along the path as she leads him into the forest, rubbing at his eyes. You’d think on his wedding day they would allow him to sleep in but it turns out even a God’s betrothed didn’t earn extra hours.

She guides him higher up the mountain, one of the many surrounding their tiny village, before she stops in front of the flowers.

It’s surprising how well they've been thriving without upkeep.

Years ago, when Kashaw was first learning the art of healing they would practice on wounded animals. At the time he didn’t know any cantrips or spells, only first aid. They had spotted the blood on bush leaves farther down the mountain and followed the trail up here. It was a small faun, its body torn from something with claws, and it was dying fast. Looking to his mother she did not kneel down to the creature herself to heal it, but nods to him.

His knees hit the ground hard enough that he would have bruises but Kashaw ignores the pain as he tries to stabilize the faun.  It was barely breathing and as Kashaw presses his fingers to its neck he barely feels the pulse of its heart. In contrast, Kashaw feels as if his own will burst through his chest.

The sound of his own blood rushing floods his ears and makes it harder to concentrate. He pushes on however, doing what best he can to give the creature a fighting chance, until he finishes. Looking up at his mother he expects her to smile, to lean down and heal the creature with a spell, awakening it. Instead she grimaces at him, sad but necessary, like when he hurt himself climbing to high in a tree. She didn’t like to see him hurt to learn a lesson, she said, but that was life.

Kashaw eyes flee back to the faun and his fingers frantically press to its pulse again but find nothing.

When she does kneel down the faun is between them and the shadow of her arm crosses over its body when she reaches for Kashaw’s face. She tilts his gaze to meet hers, blurry, as she wipes away the tears coming down his face. He didn’t know when he started crying.

“Life is a cycle,” she begins, stroking his cheek with her thumb as he hiccups and sniffles, “This faun’s body will fertilize this ground and life will sprout again. From death, life.”

As she speaks the last words she smiles at him, proud, of both his destiny and the lesson he learns.

In the year following the faun’s death they return to the spot many times. Kashaw makes it his mission to see the faun’s body fulfill the cycle. After all, it was his purpose in life.

Now there were many flowers across the spot where it had laid and they spread farther across the field despite Kashaw not visiting for at least a year. His mother leans down, wincing as her knees hit the ground, before reaching to pick one of the flowers.

“Come here, Kashaw,” she murmurs, and plucks another flower.

He does as she bids and watches as she began to thread the flowers together.

He almost wants to groan.

“Really mom? A crown of flowers?” he grumbles and watches her smile.

“You are the life to her death, Kashaw” she starts, “now work on the bracelets. We need to be back soon.”

He groans now, rolling his eyes but following her lead, and eventually allowing the smile that came with being with her in this field.

 

* * *

 

When Vesh tilts his chin up, just before her lips brush against his, he can see wilted petals fall from the corner of his eye.

 

* * *

 

He couldn’t plant enough flowers to cover his village so he left it barren. The blood still crusting along the wood and stone, grass stained with it too. The bodies had been burned, there ashes scattered by the wind, but he couldn’t do anything else. He couldn’t stand to stay here for a year, to cultivate the flowers to grow.

He left the village and as he passes through the forest he refuses to look towards the mountain with the flowers. 

 

* * *

 

It’s a few months after before he thinks of the field.

And it’s over the body of another young thing, not a faun but a girl, wounds from fighting off a wolf to protect her younger brothers.

He arrives at the farm as quickly as he can, having heard of the tale from a man running to the nearest village for a healer, and once the mother believes that he really is a cleric she rushes him to her.

She’s still as the faun when the spell finishes and he almost curses the world before her eyes open.

Her father is lifting her up into his arms before Kashaw knows it and he looks into an empty bed, blood stains still in the cloth.

There’s something soft pressed against his cheek, wiping below his eye. He looks up to see the mother, in her hand a cloth, she is smiling even and despite the tears running down her own face she offers the cloth to him.

He takes it, wiping his face with it, as she goes over to her husband and daughter. Their sons rush in to the room to join them.

Kashaw decides to leave now; he was still hoping to reach a village by nightfall. When he goes to place the cloth on the table beside the bed he notices the vase on it, with various flowers resting in the glass.

He must be staring at it because the girl’s says, voice shaky but that’s understandable, that he can take one with him, if he likes.

He doesn’t but the colors and shape of them stay in his mind for days.

(And the thought that they won’t need to be placed over her grave, thanks to him.)

 

* * *

 

They were outside the walls of Whitestone, the first days of planting upon them.

The ‘them’ in question were himself, Vax, and Keyleth. The former was insistent in speaking with the farmers to see if they needed any help so off they had gone, in the early hours of the morning.

Kashaw yawns into his hand and wonders why he agreed to come with them, instead of staying in their bed. He could have had it all to himself, burying his head into the pillows that smell like incense—Vax, from the Raven Queen’s temple—and bark—Keyleth, from the woods she had been wandering the day before—while hogging all of the blankets.

Vax and Kashaw were sitting upon one of the low stone fences as Keyleth sprints between the farmers. Vax’s hands are fiddling with something; Kashaw hasn’t bothered to look since Vax’s hands are _always_ busy with something.

“Did she do this in Emon too? Drag you or someone else outside to help with the crops?” Kashaw asks, disgruntled but also genuinely curious.

Vax shakes his head.

“She made the land here fertile again,” Vax says, watching fondly as Keyleth excitedly talks to one of the farmers, “After it had died because of the Briarwoods.”

Kashaw blinks in awe, awake now, staring out at the expansive field, “All of it?”

Vax smiles whimsically, breathes, “Yeah.”

With that, Kashaw takes a deep breath, as his heart beats faster, mind flung back to the state he left his village in. If Keyleth could do this to all of Whitestone’s farms imagine what she could…

He shakes his head.

His wife is still locked away, thank his young self’s dumb luck, but going back there is almost tempting fate too much. When on a hunt with Zahra and Vanessa they had gotten close, and Kash swore he heard Her laugh, shrill and menacing, in the harsh wind. Even if it meant mourning his village, his mother, properly Kashaw couldn’t risk it.

He couldn’t even risk telling them because they have been together long enough for Kashaw to know they would insist, as Keyleth had this morning, on doing it.

He feels something land on top of his head and lifts it to see Vax’s hand outstretched and his mouth in a wry grin.

Kashaw lifts his hand to find out what Vax has flung onto his head only to have his breath hitch, as his fingers brush against soft petals.

Vax’s smile widens and Kashaw’s heart does not settle but beats faster, as he watches a crown sprout magically onto Vax’s head. They both turn to see Keyleth’s hand stretched out to Vax, fingers twirling in the air. She had her other hand pointed to her own head and she crafted her own crown, woven into the flowers that were already present.

“Now we match,” Keyleth announces, when her work finishes.

Vax’s hands press down behind him, he leans back onto them, “Thanks, Kiki.”

Kashaw finds that even when his heart slows, his chest still feels light but this time not in fear. He also finds that, like the time in the field with his mother, he can’t fight the smile that blooms across his face.

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm on tumblr.](msbrokenbrightside.tumblr.com) Let me know what you think of this fic!


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